Simulation Unbound

Dear DE Reader:

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself,“Henry Fordonce said. Sounds easy enough, maybe a little too easy. Perhaps it was said with a wink and a nod to the assembly line as the literal and figurative model of a successful enterprise in Ford’s day. However, there were certainly a lot of variables in that “if,” and more are being added all the time in today’s connected, complex product design and development environment. Still, the maxim holds up. Neither assembly lines nor modern enterprises benefit from a lot of unnecessary back and forth.

That’s the idea at the heart of Simcenter Webapp Server: spreading the benefits of system simulation throughout the enterprise so everyone can move forward—without always going back to the CAE analyst to adjust variables. Plenty of people inside and outside of engineering could make use of simulation models if they had access to them and the expertise to run them. Simcenter Webapp Server provides that access via, as the name implies, web apps hosted on your company’s server. The apps require no expertise to run because the expert is the one creating the apps. 

End users like project engineers and technical sales staff can securely log in to a dedicated web app from anywhere; Simcenter Amesim desktop software is not required. They can then input the specific parameters they’re interested in and run the model. The app’s author determines which parameters and variables can be input and adjusted. The model is stored on the server and the simulation is run from the server, so your company’s intellectual property remains tucked safely behind the company firewall. It also means end users can open a web app with a phone, tablet, the kids’ hand-me-down laptop, or what have you, to get the answers they need. 

You simulation experts should love the extra time you get by allowing your colleagues to run their own simulations. Your colleagues should love being able to immediately get the information they need without asking you for it every time. The IT guys should love how easy it is to securely deploy. Just like Ford said: Everyone is moving forward together.

Simcenter Webapp Server2019.1 was just released last month. Siemens PLM Software says it’s now faster and simpler to use. For example, the model author can embed a picture of the model directly within Simcenter Amesim using the model properties, and the model consumer can create a project for the model with one click. The latest release also supports reuse of Simcenter Amesim user libraries created with Submodel Editor, even if they’re non-standard libraries created by you or a third party. You can also reuse post-processing variables of your model to define variables for model consumers. Plus, in addition todisplaying temporal plots of the results, end users can export the results as an Excel file for further post-processing.

Check out the Simcenter Webapp Server 2019.1 blog post for all the details, including a video and a downloadable fact sheet. We hear a lot about “the democratization of simulation.” It’s good to see a product that’s walking the talk.

Thanks for reading DE.

—The Editors